Myanmar protesters determined to defy military crackdown

Over the past few days, security forces in Myanmar appear to be clamping down on anti-coup protesters with increasing ferocity.      

On Wednesday, at least two people reportedly died of gunshot wounds sustained as security forces tried to disperse protesters in the city of Mandalay.

According to multiple reports from several other cities and towns in Myanmar, police are using live ammunition, as well as tear gas and rubber bullets.

The incidents come after at least 18 people died on Sunday after being shot by police, in what is now being called "Myanmar's Bloody Sunday" on social media.

Sunday's events have led to both sides hardening their positions. At the beginning of the week, protests continued, but there were fewer large rallies at central locations and more smaller demonstrations.

People have been barricading themselves in their neighborhoods. Esther Ze Naw, a Kachin Peace Network peace activist, shared instructions on Facebook on how to make Molotov cocktails.

"Now you guys might realize why these bastards deserve this," she wrote.

Cape Diamond, a Yangon-based journalist who has been closely covering the street protests in the city, tweeted: "I've been speaking/interviewing people on the street (at least ten persons a day) every day since the first day of the protests. They'll have the common answer at the end of the conversation; 'We will fight till the end. The revolution must succeed.'"

Myanmar's grassroots movement

Several groups are involved in organizing and supporting resistance to the military coup.

Street protests are driven mainly by young demonstrators. They generate the greatest visibility with their often creative demonstrations.

Another form of protest is the civil disobedience movement (CDM), formed a few days after the coup by doctors and nurses who refused to work under military rule

Other branches quickly joined in, including the private sector. Since then, trucks and trains have largely come to a standstill, banks have closed, and the flow of money has been slowed to a trickle.

Civil disobedience is not organized centrally, but resembles a grassroots movement, a CDM spokesman using the pseudonym "Matthew" told DW on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

What were initially spontaneous actions of individual employees in hospitals, government agencies and banks have since turned into organized groups that carry out civil disobedience internally within their institutions.

Within the groups there are sector networks, in which several hospitals or banks coordinate their protests.

These networks, in turn, are supported by CDM support teams at the community and state levels.

It's not a top-down approach, but rather each individual group acts independently and opts for the strategy that works best. Nevertheless, they sometimes seek and offer help to other groups.

The CDM estimates that some 700,000 of the country's approximately 1 million civil servants have joined the protests.

In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Matthew said: "As far as we can see, support for the CDM is increasing every day ... Although the military's actions are aimed at weakening the protests and proving that they are willing to do anything to stop the CDM, we are not intimidated. The movement will continue."

Parliamentary protest

Another major Myanmar resistance player is the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), a parliamentary group opposing the coup. 

The "Pyidaungsu Hluttaw" is Myanmar's bicameral legislature. It has 664 seats, although a quarter of them are reserved for military deputies.

The CRPH is a group of parliamentarians who were elected in the November 2020 elections and should have been sworn in on February 1, if the military had not staged a coup.

This is not a grassroots movement, but rather a partial representation of the de facto government made up mostly of National League for Democracy (NLD) members.

The demands of the demonstrators, the CRPH and the CDM are similar.

Both reject military rule and demand that power be returned to the people. They insist the results of the November 2020 elections should be respected, and Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD should be installed as the legally elected government.

Immediately after Bloody Sunday, the CRPH declared the military-led State Administration Council (SAC) as a terrorist organization.

The SAC and all security forces involved in acts of violence must be held accountable, as the CRPH has repeatedly emphasized on Facebook and in interviews.

A speech delivered last Friday by Myanmar's United Nations envoy Kyaw Moe Tun at the United Nations also drew global attention. It called for international support for the CRPH and for everything to be done to ensure coup fails.

How do the different protest pillars coordinate?

All three pillars of the protests contribute to the movement in different ways.

The street protests are visible and produce the images that go around the world.

The CDM is less visible, but it has been able to put pressure on the military government because it can collapse the country's administration and economy, making Myanmar ungovernable.

The CRPH, on the other hand, is trying to position itself nationally and internationally as the legitimate representative of the people, so that it can be the decisive interlocutor for negotiations and the international community.

To oppose the street protests, the military has so far relied primarily on violent suppression.

The military is cracking down on the CDM and CRPH with night raids and arrests of key figures.

However, the decentralized organization of street protests and the CDM makes it difficult for the military to target one person as the leader and bring the movements under control.

What unites all three groups is a great willingness to sacrifice.

 "We know that if we do not take action against them, our future will be shattered into pieces, our lives will be in danger, and more importantly, our country will be in the dark ages," said Matthew from the CDM. 

Political analyst Ashley South told DW, "I think one of the problems at the moment is that both sides are convinced they are winning, and that's a recipe for disaster."